


According to Regulations

by Yrindor



Series: Sports Anime Shipping Olympics 2017 Fills [3]
Category: Tennis no Oujisama | Prince of Tennis
Genre: Alien Kikumaru Eiji, Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, Challenge: Sports Anime Shipping Olympics | SASO 2017, Implied Sexual Content, M/M, Robot Inui Sadaharu
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-09
Updated: 2017-10-09
Packaged: 2019-01-15 08:13:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 925
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12317190
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yrindor/pseuds/Yrindor
Summary: There's an unwritten rule that Inui doesnothave roommates.  Unfortunately, someone appears to have missed that memo.





	According to Regulations

**Author's Note:**

  * For [BlueMinuet](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlueMinuet/gifts).



> Written for SASO 2017 Bonus Round 2 for the prompt "I am 100% certain that I am 0% sure what I'm going to do."

Inui sighed as he settled down onto his bed and plugged himself in for the night. It wasn't strictly necessary. He had always been able to connect to the ship's data systems wirelessly, and after his most recent upgrade, even a physical plug for charging was technically unnecessary so long as he was in close enough proximity to a charging station. But he had always been somewhat traditional in his ways, and there was something far more reassuring (and intimate) about tangible wires tethering him to the rest of the system while he recharged and ran his heaviest number crunching processes overnight (plus, there was a far lower chance of picking up stray signals over a physical data connection; he didn't want to think of the error pirated pornography would have introduced into his data on stellar accretion rates if he hadn't caught it).

As the ship's head data officer, he technically wasn't high enough in the command chain to warrant a room to himself, but the number of computers and wires crammed into the space had more-or-less forced the issue. Or at least, it had until several weeks prior when he had come back one night to find one of the Requisitions clerks trying to fit an overly large suitcase through his doorway.

"Excuse me," Inui had said, and the clerk had jumped, hitting the suitcase and generating an irritated yowl from the other side of the doorway.

"Oh, nice to meet you," the clerk had said, holding out his hand. "I'm Oishi Shuuichirou, one of your new roommates."

Inui had stopped. "I don't have roommates."

"You do now. Maintenance and Facilities said they sent you a notification." Inui had a vague recollection of a message received the day before. He had been in the middle of a particularly complicated set of navigational calculations requested before the ship entered a stretch of space pocketed with deep gravity wells around neutron stars and an occasional black hole. He had assumed it was another shipwide notification of bathroom malfunctions or something else that didn't concern him and his inorganic body and ignored it.

"I don't have roommates," Inui had repeated. "There's no space."

"Well, I'm sure we'll work something out," Oishi had said. "Eiji and I were up in the general bunks, but it turns out a couple of the new recruits are allergic. Eiji, come meet our new roommate."

A feline alien had vaulted over the suitcase to stand next to Oishi, tail swishing. "Kikumaru Eiji," he had said. "Nice to meet you."

"My computers are allergic to cat fur," Inui had said, not taking the offered hand. He was already picturing the nightmare of cat fur clogging the fans in his servers and crashing his entire system.

"I don't shed," Eiji had said huffily.

"We're sorry, but this is the only room on the ship that isn't already severely overcrowded. Until we make the detour past the new outpost next month with this new batch of cadets, there's no space left anywhere. Maintenance is already complaining about how they had to convert a couple of the showers to temporary bunks, and Medical has lost two full sick bays."

Inui had sighed and stared at the luggage blocking the entrance to his space. "Just don't touch anything," he had said.

That had been two weeks earlier. Now, Eiji and Oishi were comfortably installed in what had been Inui's closet (he had never understood the human obsession with so many clothes when two pairs really were enough, and it had been easier to requisition a new cot for the closet than to try to move the tangled wiring of his server farm from what had once been the other bed in the room).

At least, Eiji and Oishi _had_ been in the closet when Inui had started plugging himself in for the night and initiating his overnight processes. Now they were both standing next to his bed, and Eiji had the huge grin on his face that Inui had learned never meant anything good.

"Nee, Inui, what if we joined you out here tonight?" Eiji asked, jumping up onto the bed. "The closet's really stuffy again; I don't think Maintenance fixed the air vent yet."

Inui felt like Eiji was omitting some part of the story. A quick glance at Oishi's face, which was currently an alarmingly bright beacon in his infrared sensors, confirmed his suspicions.

"And?" Inui prompted.

Eiji's ears twitched. "Well…we were thinking that since we're roommates now, you might want to join us."

"Join you in what?" Inui asked, wishing that he hadn't already allocated most of his processors to data-crunching. Navigating interactions with other sentient lifeforms had _not_ been included in his bandwidth distribution calculations for the night.

"In this," Eiji said with a grin, leaning down to lick Inui's bare chest. Inui jolted at the sudden static charge across his body. After a lab incident caused in part by insufficient sensory input, he had increased the haptic sensitivity of his sensor network as part of his last system update. Eiji's rough tongue dragging across the upgraded synth skin threatened to overload his processors completely.

Even the lingering aftershocks of the sensation were intense, leaving him no space to even consider thinking. When Eiji looked up at him expectantly, it was all he could do to make a noise he hoped was sufficient to convey his enthusiastic assent.

The sparks that exploded over his body after that told him he had succeeded as they drowned out any attempt at further thought.


End file.
